


for darkling green

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Ensemble Cast, F/F, Gen, Other, Post-Canon, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5037901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asriel has a question for Undyne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for darkling green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplycarryon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/gifts).



> _(a thousand flowering trees_ – To try to know / some [(soursharp)](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246304) something about something)
> 
> fic assumes an au where shenanigans transpired and chara and asriel were saved.

“Undyne?”

She turns to look at him. He’s sitting on her good side, so thankfully she doesn’t have to crane her head around too painfully. “What’s up, kid?”

Asriel Dreemurr is silent for a little while. He’s a quiet and well-behaved boy—kind of too self-contained and thoughtful for her taste, truth be told. She’s more comfortable with disaster magnets like Frisk and troublemakers like Chara, being that she was both of those things when she was a little nipper their age. But Asriel’s seen some serious shit, even by their weird extended friend family standards. If he’s more grown-up for his age than most kids, Undyne can’t blame him.

They’re both sitting on the hillside, stretched out on a blanket with a picnic basket in between them. There’s a little dip in the land ahead of them, and Undyne feels a little like they’re sitting along the side of a big green fuzzy bowl. Down at the bottom, Frisk and some of the local monster kids are running around with Papyrus, playing some sort of game. It _was_ soccer to start out with, back before Toriel told Undyne to go sit on the sidelines because she was playing way too rough, but now there seems to be three balls and a Frisbee involved??? At least everybody seems to be having fun.

The others are all on the opposite hill—Sans slacking off under a tree, Alphys watching anime on her phone because that’s obviously an outdoor activity, Toriel refereeing the game. Chara isn’t playing for the same reasons Undyne herself isn’t. They had their knitting stuff out for a little while, and then they were talking to Asgore after, but for the time being they’re sprawled out on his lap, napping. It is downright precious how much more relaxed and cheerful that kid is without any other humans around.

And, best of all, the sky yawns wide over Newer Home’s park, blue and warm with only a couple of clouds. The first couple of days she felt weird to not have a ceiling of rock over her head, exposed, but now that she’s used to it? It’s _awesome._ Everything is warm and bright.

Well, except for the sober look on Asriel’s face. Kid isn’t even watching the game anymore, just staring into space and not seeing any of it. “How do you get to be strong?”

She sits up, crosses her legs and props herself up on her hands. “Isn’t that a question you oughtta be asking your dad? He’s a lot stronger than I am, you know.”

Asriel shakes his head—slowly, then quicker, so that his floppy ears whip back and forth. “I can’t talk to Dad about this. He’d just get worried.”

Undyne shrugs. “This is normally the point where I’d tell you how much to bench, or assign you fifty laps around the park yelling about how great you are. But you’re plenty strong anyway—you’re your parents’ kid. I’ve seen what you can do with magic. The kind of strength you’re talking about’s different, right?”

Asriel narrows his eyes and nods. His hands go to that locket he’s always wearing, like a nervous habit. “Yeah. I don’t really want to be strong for me. Or… I guess I do, but not just for me.”

He’s looking at Chara, she’d bet anything. Undyne herself gazes across to where Alphys is sitting in the shade, and bubbly exasperation and fondness well up in her gills, fizzy as a shaken soda and twice as gross. Love is a strange and silly thing.

“Well, you should still maybe learn from your dad,” Undyne says. “Not just because he’s freaking strong, and uh, not because he’s still moping about your mom either.” (Asriel winces a little.) “Like, you know the story of how I got to be captain of the Royal Guard, right?”

“Yeah,” Asriel replies.

“Asgore could have knocked me on my butt and sent me packing if he’d wanted to,” she goes on. “But he didn’t. Know why?”

“Because he’s nice,” Asriel says loyally. “And because he saw your potential, right?”

Undyne snorts. “I’d like to think so. Your dad’s got restraint! A lot of it. He’ll push himself into whatever he thinks he has to, but for all that he’s as strong as he is, he doesn’t throw his weight around. It’s _fun_ to cut loose and wreak a little mayhem from time to time, but it’s not very responsible.”

“Yeah.” Asriel looks at his hands. “I think I can understand that. I didn’t… when I was a flower, I didn’t let myself care about consequences. I just wanted to… to see if I could make myself feel something about somebody else. Instead of just thinking about how jealous or bored or lonely _I_ was. But that wasn’t… I had power, but I wasn’t strong.”

“Yep,” says Undyne. “If you’re gonna be a leader one day, you’ve gotta learn when your strength is supposed to be used and when it’s just gotta exist as a threat for anybody stupid enough to mess with you. Your parents are good at that!

“Being strong for somebody else is way harder, though.”

Asriel makes a face like he already knows.

“Yeah,” Undyne says, and shrugs. “So, it turns out that just running around being totally awesome and doing things like slam dunking your girlfriend-to-be in a trash can isn’t necessarily the best way to solve her emotional problems! Who knew!!”

This makes Asriel laugh, as she’d hoped. She shrugs at herself again, sloughing off the frustration of the past.

“I could support Alphys when she talked about her mistakes, but I was too busy running around making an ass of myself to think about the questions she needed me to ask. I didn’t think to stick around and chase her into the lab, either. I let her down. Luckily we had Frisk around, so everything turned out all right—” here she makes a face— “but things could’ve been a lot worse. I’ve learned that sometimes I’ve gotta be the me that Alphys needs. You know? I don’t have to change the person I am completely, ‘cause she likes the me I am now and so do I. But there’s ways I can be there for her that nobody else can be. Thinking about that’s one way to get stronger.

“So, kid, you gotta ask yourself, does the person you want to protect need the tough you? Or the you that’s soft and not ashamed to cry? ‘Cause sometimes,” and she jerks her chin in Frisk’s general direction, “the best kind of strength to have is the strength to be some wimpy loser with a big heart.

“You told ‘em back before we left the underground, right? Don’t kill or be killed, and all that. Do no harm, but take no shit.” And she gives Asriel her biggest grin. “I think that’s pretty great advice, don’t you?”

And he smiles at her, finally: Doe-eyed and soft in the midday light. “Thanks,” he says. “I feel kinda better now. I promise I’ll keep thinking about it.”

“Good,” says Undyne, satisfied; she unfolds her legs and stretches out on her back.

After a long pause:

“Uh, also, don’t tell your mom I said swears in front of you. Unlike your dad, she actually _will_ kick my butt if she finds out.”

Asriel laughs, almost but not quite mean. “Okay, okay. I won’t.”


End file.
